This invention relates to decimal floating point (DFP) numbers, and more particularly to converting from scaled binary coded decimal (SBCD) floating point numbers into DFP numbers.
DFP has been used in calculators for many years but for the first time it is becoming part of an IEEE standard (754R Floating Point Standard). The DFP formats, as defined by the IEEE 754R standard, include: a thirty-two bit single precision format, a sixty-four bit double precision format, and a one hundred and twenty eight bit extend precision format. This new standard provides the means for computer designers to develop specific operations that are optimized to this new standard. Prior to the standardization of the operands it was not possible to develop specific operations to accelerate these types of computations. For some commercial workloads, emulation of DFP operations in software can dominate the processing timing.
With the advent of the new standard and the increase in the use of decimal arithmetic operations for financial calculations, it becomes desirable to implement these operations at a high performance.